`Mmm' Telephone Lines Link Constituents To Mezvinsky

The 13th District's new congresswoman has set up special phone lines to broaden her services for constituents outside her home base in Lower Merion Township.

If you reside in the Schwenksville-Skippack area of the district, you can call 287-5MMM.

If you hail from the Ambler area, dial 542-7MMM.

Margolies-Mezvinsky, a Democrat, has not yet opened satellite offices in those areas.

But the phone lines are operating now, Jake Tapper, her spokesman, said yesterday.

"It saves people the cost of a toll call," he said.

Margolies-Mezvinsky pledged during her campaign last year to have a western satellite office within 20 minutes of Harleysville, Pottstown and Collegeville.

Tapper said the Schwenksville-Skippack area will be the site of that office.

She recently decided to add another satellite office in the Ambler area to serve that highly populated region, which also includes Abington and Cheltenham townships.

Specific locations for the two satellite offices have not been found.

Tapper said the search for office space is taking time because the space must be inexpensive, accessible and small.

"We can't put it in a basement on a remote road," he said.

Margolies-Mezvinsky is "hoping down the road" to have a caseworker visit different sites throughout the county as a kind of mobile office to reach those who can't make it to the three permanent offices, he said.

The congresswoman's main district office is in Lower Merion Township -- at One Presidential Boulevard in Bala Cynwyd, where she had her campaign headquarters last year. The phone number there is 667-3MMM.

Her phone number in Washington D.C. is the same as that of the congressman she replaced --Republican Lawrence Coughlin, who retired at the end of 1992.

Asked how many constituents have called, Tapper said the "phones have been ringing off the hook on everything from a missed Social Security check to people with an opinion on one of (President) Clinton's nominations."